today, in descending order of time spent: reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, playing video games, watching House, watching Making a Murderer, housework, trying to do a website job, seeing a new client, texting friends.

the only thing of any real productive value that I did today was seeing the new client, who came in for anxiety.

the session was stilted, slow-moving and awkward. lots of it depended on my asking questions designed mostly to maintain a comfortable flow of conversation. after about half an hour of this I struggle and falter – there are only so many relevant, open-ended questions one can ask a person who, because they experience anxiety more intense than average, doesn’t feel able or willing to divulge yet.

sessions with anxiety clients are always, always thus. I ask them about their experience and they do tell me honestly (they want to make an effort; they have conquered their feelings enough to show up to an inherently anxiety-inducing situation), but they do so in a circumspect way. they answer the question with the words they think they should, are expected to, use, but don’t feel comfortable enough to elaborate with whatever else might be going through their head. it is that other stuff that runs through your head, rather than the actual literal answer, that often makes an effective session with a mental health professional. that background noise is the real juice we want, because it *is* the anxiety talking.

anxiety makes people guarded about their words. that guardedness is just exactly what makes a counselling session ineffective.

my job is to facilitate the sense of safety and comfort that might counteract the anxiety a bit. it takes more than one session, more than one hour of chatting, to build a sense of safety and comfort.

unfortunately people who experience anxiety often don’t make it that long. unfortunately we all have high expectations of psychology, psychiatry, social work, whatever. unfortunately talking of things in such a way that might create such an atmosphere of safety.. well it just doesn’t feel productive enough. not to the practitioner (who might feel guilt that they’re not making enough progress quickly enough) and not to the client (who might feel that they’re wasting their money on this fraud because progress is not being made quickly enough).

if the client is not paying, as in my other job, it is worse. the client is receiving a service that is funded by someone else, such as the government. to the client, the service is free. it’s speculated that this results in an underlying belief that the service isn’t worth much. if something is free it is not valuable. if it is not worth money, well, it probably isn’t worth the effort either.

my paying clients are essentially admitting that the service is worth something by doling out the cash. if it is worth the cash, it is also worth the comparatively measly effort of listening to what I say, and putting into practise what I advise. my paying clients almost always have better results than my ‘free’ clients (who simply don’t stop to think that the service *is* being paid for… by their taxes). ‘free’ clients think to themselves, ‘hey, it’s only costing me my time, after all. what’s the harm in giving it a try? i’ll give therapy a chance. if I don’t get results I needn’t continue wasting my time.’

however, whether they’re paying or not, what it means for the anxious client is a cognitive dilemma.

‘that session was really awkward. I knew it would be. I mean, I do want to conquer this anxiety, but talking about the things that make me feel anxious made me feel *unbearably* anxious. i’d rather continue sweeping the relatively mild anxiety I experience at other times under the rug. that sometimes works. that session though? that didn’t work. I didn’t like it. in fact, I felt even worse after it. I’m not making all this effort to feel worse! I can’t bear the thought of going back, and why should I, if it doesn’t work?’

the above thought process has obvious logical fallacies, when it is spelled out in such a way. (assuming you’re aware that confronting anxiety in a structured way in the present has the benefit of needing not to continue trying to avoid it in the future.) but for most people, in the moment, it is probably not quite so explicit. such a reaction is based in emotion, after all. it’s only when you delve into the thoughts that prompt the reaction that you make the illogical nature of it quite clear. once it’s clear, you’re prompted to challenge it. challenging it is hard. much harder than the underside of a rug.

meanwhile, are you serious? hardheadedness is in the dictionary, but guardedness is not?

I can mostly only type with one arm; my right has developed a strange strainedness. You know how, when you use a mouse for a very extended length of time, your arm muscles feel strained? Repetitive strain injury, I think it’s called. It isn’t quite a cramp. It is a very discomforting chronic ache. It creeps down from my neck, through my shoulder and to my wrist. Currently there are not many positions that don’t cause pain.

It’s so bad that I was quite close to leaving work early and just lying down for the rest of the day, only I don’t think I can really afford any more sick time right now. Also, now that I’m stuck here anyway, I’m finding that it’s not too terrible. I’m reading Treating Self-Destructive Behaviours in Trauma Survivors. I doubt I would have read such a useful book if it weren’t the only thing I could really do. I just hope I have the discipline to actually finish it. So far the most useful thing I have taken away from it is: Don’t use safety contracts. A contract just encourages deceit.

Someone who has experienced abuse and trauma probably already has extensive training in seeking approval from authority figures. Self harming is going to be one of their only (effective) coping strategies. You can’t simply ask them not to do it and expect that just because this unhelpful behaviour has been extinguished (even if it has) then everything is going to be alright. It isn’t. People use these strategies only because nothing else works. How is it helping this client to just ask him or her not to use them anymore?

So just don’t. Don’t make them commit to promises they can’t possibly keep. That is only ever going to result in them lying to you, and then feeling even more shame about engaging in behaviours they can’t help engaging in.

I was just interrupted by my boss raving about funding we might be getting that he is quite excited about.

Following conversations with him I often come away thinking it must be nice to be so excitable. Such passion and such meaning derived from these passions. That, right there, is what I want so much.

Of course, I do have passions… don’t I? Perhaps I just don’t follow them through. It is actual engagement with your passions that make them grow, surely. I think my problem is not that I am not passionate, just that I do not engage with anything.

Laziness. It always comes back to laziness. Surely being the person that I want to be is reason enough to do things, despite not necessarily feeling like doing them. Pushing myself. Just sucking it up, just getting on with it!

Seriously, there is nothing worse for depression than doing nothing. There is nothing worse for a sense of meaninglessness than doing nothing. If you’re not engaging with anything (of any meaning) then of course nothing is going to HAVE any meaning.

At the end of the day, what is more important: Being indulgently lazy, or feeling a sense of meaning, of accomplishment, of passion? Like, seriously. If I was watching my life from the outside I would be shouting at my self-character in such outrage. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT UGH YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THIS WHY ARE YOU SO FUCKING LAZY GET IT TOGETHER!

It gets worse from there.

I can’t believe anyone even likes you. You can’t expect anyone to continue to like you once they realise what a hopeless case you are. You need to get on this before everyone leaves you. If you don’t, you can’t say you didn’t know. It will be your own stupid fault entirely. You’ll deserve it. You do deserve it. You deserve to be alone and miserable. You’re pathetic. Hideous through and through. There is just no redeeming that. No hope. Why even bother? Everything you do will be barely concealed shit anyway. Only just good enough. Just scraping through. At some point none of it is going to fool anyone anymore. You think you haven’t already done all the best you ever could? It’s all going to be downhill from here.

So yeah. I mean, really, who can blame you for not even trying any more? Trying is just another reminder of how you’ll never ever be good enough ever. So go on. Just go back to bed. Just go.

Well I had to stop there as my boss was telling me to go home. So now I’m home. I’ve eaten pesto cheese toast and tried to nap and now am watching Julie and Julia.

I wasn’t expecting that voice to be so loud that it actually came out. It is only a tiny part of me, as it is of everyone. I’m not as shocked as I imagine anyone I know would be, reading this. Though we all have it, we don’t own this part of us… not out loud. We indulge it in secret. When anyone voices any of it they are shouted down by those they love, who are only trying to help… they don’t want us to feel this way, and so unintentionally invalidate us. Unintentionally make us feel alone and pathetic for having these thoughts.

I know I said in my last entry that I was doing better, but I’m not sure any more.

I am really struggling to go to work. It’s not the work itself that is stalling me… once I am actually doing it, I am often fine. Once I am writing the report, or the email, or sitting with the client, or typing up my notes, I am okay. I can handle it. I have thoughts like “What was I so worried about, I should have started this two hours ago.”

But leading up to it, waking up in the morning knowing I have to shower and dress and drive and sign in and say good morning to my colleagues and turn on my computer and DO THE WORK… the thought of it drags me down and fills me with dread and makes me want to be a homeless bum with no responsibilities or mortgage or pets or wardrobe choices or values or dreams or loved ones or life.

THE THOUGHT makes me depressed.

I mean, I’m not the same once I’m AT work either. Once I do start writing, or talking, or whatever, my attention is all over the fucking place, my focus is shit, I can’t make connections, I don’t. do. good. work. I mean, I’m not saying it’s simply all in my head (ha) and if I just get over it I’ll be fine.

But I’m pretty sure that’s a big part of it.

I haven’t taken my meds the past two days. I don’t feel it’s helping, really, and Brenton is really adamant that it’s bad for me. But at the same time I’m like.. it’s not hurting, is it? Maybe it will help, if I just keep taking it. Maybe it hasn’t been long enough.

Do I think Brenton is overstating the potential damage? Yes. He thinks SSRIs are like taking a low dose of MDMA every day. I’m pretty sure it works completely differently.

So why am I having this aversion to continuing my dosage? How can I get frustrated with my clients when they don’t maintain theirs?

Because a big part of why I don’t want to take mine is that I take recreational drugs, and SSRIs interfere with that. It is not safe or advisable to indulge while on Prozac.

I don’t have much pleasure lately, surely I shouldn’t be asked to give up recreational drugs as WELL?

Well. Jess. Come on. You are a professional. What would you tell a client?

It is not advisable to take recreational drugs right now. MDMA will deplete much needed serotonin. Opioids and amphetamines will have very low-mood after-effects (your mood is low enough) and possibly result in serotonin syndrome.

My advice to you, as a mental health professional, is to take your fucking Prozac, and lay off the rest.

Last night UQ had a postgrad advice night that I’d been planning to attend. Mumm was going to come with me.

She got home from work at 5.30pm and didn’t really want to go. I said that’s fine! and prepared to go on my own, but then she elected to come along anyway.. I think mostly because she’d’ve felt guilty for making me go all on my lonesome (even though I really didn’t care). We left at 6pm.. and realised soon after what a bad time of day it was trafficwise to drive from the northside to St Lucia. We took the Inner City Bypass and towards the end I said to mumm, “get in the right lane.”

“Are you sure?” (mumm doesn’t know Brisbane very well yet.)

“I think so yeah, but I’m not totally sure.” (I don’t know that side of Brisbane very well, but I was still pretty sure).

Anyway mumm decided to ignore me and go in the opposite direction. A direction that took us to a gridlocked intersection at which we got stuck for 15 minutes. The light would turn green but no cars would be able to get through cuz the traffic was just too bad. We sat there getting later & more frustrated till I said “fuck this let’s just go get dinner.”

So I didn’t go get postgraduate advice.

I want to do a PhD. There are factors, though. FACTORS. Ones I kinda need to consider.

First, I’m not too definite about what I want to do my PhD on. You kinda need to go in with at least a vague idea, right? Something you can talk to potential supervisors about so that they look surmisingly at you and think “yes, this one has passion and drive, she is clearly meant to be here. I’ll take her!”

I know I want to do it in the field of social psychology. Social psychology is what got me interested in psychology in the first place. I am passionate about social psych research! But that’s a teency weency bit too broad. I need to narrow it down.

I did my honours thesis on inter-group relations. It would be most easy to continue in that. I would like to do something different though.

Something to do with gender, or young people. The socialisation of gender and how it relates to… rape culture? Or maybe young people and how they communicate about uncomfortable issues like… rape culture?

Maybe I just need to go in with something like that and see where it takes me. But then there are the other factors…

I am saving up to make a deposit on a house with Brenton. Currently I am saving about $1000 a month. At that rate I’ll have saved enough in 6 months… and then I’ll be paying off a mortgage. How can I pay off an enormous amount of loan when I’m working a bunch less because I’m studying?

A PhD takes four years full time. I don’t think I’ll even be able to do full time the whole time. I have three jobs at the moment.

Which brings me to the other factor. If Brenton and I want to have a child it’ll need to be soon. I’m 32. Even if it does take me only four years to finish studying, that’s still too long and I’ll be 36-37 and too old for childing.

How can I do a PhD while paying off a house and having a child I can’t.

I’ve been down in Sydney for a contextual therapy conference, which can explain my lack of updates in two ways. Way the first: Whilst away I was disgustingly busy and had exactly zero moments alone with time to spare. Way the second: I forgot I had a blog; it didn’t enter my head once the entire time. Possibly if it had I would have made time, probably not.

The conference was for the most part excellent. I participated in a two day extensive workshop on fluency and fluidity in acceptance and commitment therapy, and the following three days attended a whole buncha talks on varying contextual therapies (RFT, FAP (yes, I know) and compassion focussed therapy). Since my return I’ve been reading of these and trying to get my head around RFT in particular, which is just ridiculous.

There are three tasks in clinical RFT:

Help the client discriminate the relationship between current functional classes of behaviour and problematic consequences. According to the analysis done we expect the problematic functional class to be responding in coordination with self-instructions/rules.

Help the client discriminate his/her own responses and frame them in perspective and hierarchy with the deictic ‘I’ and train this repertoire as an alternative functional class.

Help the client specify appetitive augmental functions for further behaviour

Fuck me, right?

I quite liked FAP though, which is a type of therapy in which the client’s problematic behaviour is explored in session by applying it to the immediate relationship with the therapist and new ways of responding are encouraged, because training in the here&now with me is more effective than talking about the then&there with them.

If that made no sense now you know why I am not a therapy trainer.

So that was my last Monday-Friday. In between conferencing there were numerous social (alcoholic) engagements with other conference attendees, with Brenton’s friend Sina, and with my friend Adam. The Saturday after my return was Marie’s birthday, for which I thought it would be a good idea to not get too plastered. Unfortunately everyone else did not agree. So on the overhand I got to not be too hungover the next day, on the underhand I had to be relatively sober around a crowd of absolutely smashed people. I did however have the opportunity to have satisfying conversations with Nem, Fiona, Eva and Marie, and with a couple other people whose names I can’t recall, so the night still won.

Sunday night was dinner with Brenton, Eva and Jimmy. Today it was back to work, After a week away from it I am expected to be rejuvinated and refreshed and motivated and instead I am writing in my blog.

Yesterday I watched Mean Girls, and the week before that Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion. Of course I’ve watched a whoooooole buncha movies in which a central theme is how vicious and traumatising highschool can be. There are dozens of them out there. It’s a popular idea.

Further, quite a few of my current friends report that they had miserable highschool experiences. People who grew up in Brisbane invariably agree with the highschool as hell trope. I consider myself really lucky in my own highschool experiences; they seemed to have come together in a process that spared me almost all that.

I started in Melbourne, at an all girls’ Catholic college, and with a number of girls from my Catholic primary school – a ready made protective entourage. I had a really positive experience for the 1.3 years I was there, before going to a Lutheran school in Darwin for a year (there was no Catholic highschool in Darwin in those days). Since Darwin is backwards-hicksville I was comparitively way advanced (& I mean social-wise as well as study-wise), which I think helped.

From there I went to Cairns High, for year 9. The first half of this year was really my only poor highschool experience. I was placed in a class in which all the girls had already formed a closed-in clique to which I was not welcome. I wandered the grounds at lunchtime until I fell in with a group of girls from another class; and the next semester we went to a more traditional format in which we all had different classes for each subject. I made friends way easily after that.

Cairns High was completely different to any representation of school in the movies I mentioned above, and also to the descriptions of my friends’. I don’t recall a single instance of bullying or meanness. We had our friendship groups but we were also all friendly with each other. There wasn’t a single person I couldn’t or didn’t have fun experiences with. The sportos and the geeks and the art nerds and the super intelligent people all hung out in complete amicableness.

I didn’t realise this wasn’t totes norms until I moved to Brisbane for 6 months of year 10. My experiences at a Brisbane (Catholic) highschool slot in perfectly with the misery described by my Brisbane friends. Somehow, again, I was lucky and had several strong friendship groups – but I witnessed bullying. I remember it distinctly because it shocked me so completely. It kind of killed some of my idealism to see one of my close girlfriends (Jo) come sauntering up with two other girls, and all proceed to verbally smash another of my close girlfriends (Kath), because she had crooked teeth, until she cried. They stopped teasing her when I started to cry too, purely out of empathy. I couldn’t get it. I’d seen Jo and Kath hang out before! WTF, Jo? Because you wanted to seem cool to the other two girls?

So glad I got to go back to Cairns High for years 11 and 12.

There ends my unscheduled highscool recap, and now I get back to my point. After watching the two above-mentioned highschool movies I came in to work today thinking about highschool horror. We had a big all-staff meeting day and I sat in the back, looking out at all all the people I work with; about fifty men and women with ages ranging from the students on placement (mid-twenties) to hella old (60s). I found myself picking out the ones who probably had miserable Vs great experiences in highschool… and there were a whole lot more of the miserable category. I mean, I was only guessing, but I think you can kinda tell. The people who aren’t gorgeous or witty or confident in all likelihood were probably even less so as adolescents. I suppose I’m also making an assumption that only gorgeous/witty/confident people have a generally great highschool experience but according to the movies I’d just saturated my brain with: Valid.

That’s when I started thinking that counsellors and psychologists and social workers possibly have an over-representation of miserable-highschool-goers. I mean, there’s the “I want to understand/better myself” aspect that you get over and over when doing first year social science introduction sessions, meaning those people have a self concept of either complication or flaw, which could mean (or result from) a bad highschool experience… unless it stems from narcissicm which could mean confidence which could mean a great highschool experience but I think that’s less likely.

Wow that paragraph got really complicated. I guess, if I were going to write a thesis, my hypothesis would be: It is thought that counsellors will be more likely to report having a negative experience of high school. It is possible that low confidence and self worth could lead to bullying and ostracism, and that following these experiences people seek to explore and understand these factors by studying human behaviour and psychology, and that further they perhaps possess a stronger desire than usual to improve social justice (i.e. so that the poor bullied suckers they identify with don’t have to go through the shit that they did).

Today was my first two job day, where I work at Brenton’s in the morning and from home doing online counselling at night. Luckily I didn’t have much on for tonight as after the morning at Brenton’s I already felt like I’d done a whole day. and I only had two clients!

With one of the clients I noticed that while I was explaining some things to him he looked like he was attending; he’d nod and make minimal encouragers, but then as soon as I was done he launched into whatever he’d obviously been waiting the entire time for his chance to say.

It made me wonder about all the times that must have happened when the other party was less obvious about it. I’m wondering now if I spend too much time explaining the ideas behind things.

For example, when people have anxiety, I (and many other mental health workers I guess) find it helpful to explain how anxiety is an adaptive and helpful response:

I mean anxiety’s something that helps keep us alive… or it did, when we evolved it. When you’re about to do something that could be dangerous, anxiety prepares you for it. Only now that we’re no longer hunting, gathering cro-magnons and “dangerous” means “people will laugh at me,” as opposed to “a cave lion will eat me,” anxiety seems unhelpful. Our brains and bodies are still only evolved to the cro-magnon stage though; they haven’t caught up to the whole safe, modern society thing, and anxiety seems out of place and unhealthy.

Explaining all that normalises it and often changes a client’s perception from “ugh brain you so cray I hate you” to “wow thanks brain for trying so hard to keep me around, your heart’s in the right place I guess.” You know, if brains had hearts.

Only now I’m wondering if I take too long on it, or use too much jargon (though I doubt it, the above is pretty much the equivalent of what I’d say), or aren’t being clear enough, or just am really awful at longish speeches.

I guess another example of anxiety is catastrophising one single five second interaction with someone who didn’t even notice it and exaggerating it to my entire practice with the end conclusion being that I’m an utter failure and everyone’s about to realise it and shun me and I’ll die alone in the gutter.

Online counselling is pretty popular. I get lots of young people (14-25), lots of women who are single parents or recently separated or want to talk about their relationship issues, and lots of people who are quite depressed or anxious or who have experienced trauma or abuse or are thinking about suicide or are self harming. These categories make up about 95% of new clients at any time.

After a couple of bad experiences I no longer directly work with people who are self harming or thinking about suicide – it is too risky. I refer them to a specialist service. To be extra careful I also refer people who score highly on depression or anxiety or whose main issue is some other mental health concern. Many mental health issues are empirically shown to just not be suitable for online counselling anyway.

Sometimes, though, a high risk client will slip through to me. They won’t be too clear on their initial submission and will only disclose the real issue once they’re in the counselling session. When that happens I can’t just kick them out – especially if they are at a high level of risk. When that happens I spend the session working through the anxiety they (often) have about accessing face to face support and try to link them in with it.

Sometimes they won’t have it. They don’t want support workers involved in their actual life. They don’t want hospital staff or the department of child safety or the police knocking on their door. I can understand that, for sure.

But it is really, really stressful when someone on the computer at the other end of the internet is telling you they are in a very high risk situation and simply won’t let you help them be safe.

They won’t let me help them. and then I just have to wonder.. forever.

As part of my internship I need to have a senior professional of the field directly observe me provide therapeutic interventions for a number of issues. I’ve been procrastinating with this requirement the whole 18months till now because… well because I’m sure that as soon as someone who actually knows what they’re doing sees me working directly they’ll know exactly how incompetent I am (imposter syndrome, anyone? Oh, right.. everyone).

Also because it’s a hassle to arrange… to ask permission from work managers, to explain it to a client and obtain their consent, to book recording equipment, to actually do it…

Well I’ve only five months of my internship left to go, so I thought it was about time to think about it. I asked permission at work, arranged it with my supervisor, and finally.. outlined it all to one of my clients, who seemed absolutely fine with it, and gave consent. I booked the recording equipment, set up the room, planned the session, got the supplies ready (it was going to be a symbolic and art therapy session)… and! The client was due half an hour ago.

Shit. Shit. I’m sitting here with the camera trained on me. I had to run around to buy the outdated videocassettes it uses. It took me a half hour to set this room up. I brought everything I needed in from home. AND THE CLIENT DIDN’T SHOW.

Of course, it’s hardly a coincidence. This client has never not shown for a session before (and we’ve had 10 sessions). This is exactly why I wasn’t looking forward to asking a client to do this. Who would want to have their counselling session recorded and watched by and discussed with an anonymous third party? Argh.

Now I need to find someone else to ask. Three someone elses. And due to all these stupid work changes, I’m barely SEEING three clients at the moment.

This is a good thing, my colleague would say. It is, because:

in preparing for this session I did catch up on my symbolwork literature.

I now know to rethink how I frame this experience to clients, and be sure to triplecheck and quadruple-clarify everything with them.

I also planned this session a lot more carefully than I usually do, which was a good experience.. I should do that more.

Except (and all counsellors say this) it really does seem that it’s always when you carefully plan for a session that the client doesn’t show! …Wow, I am really bad at finding silver linings. Every silver lining has yet another, blacker and more poisonous lining!

I think the worst part is… I got all excited about it! That slight performance anxiety that is actually more exhilarating than anything else. And now I am disappoint 🙁

I can’t believe it’s only Monday. I really do not like this five day work week business. It doesn’t suit my constitution.

Today was much longer than usual, though, as I had supervision directly after work. I arrived there elated, and of course when I said so, had to explain why. The summer evening was very lovely.. it had been really very horribly hot today, but by skypink 6pm was lovely and cool, bright and dark, summery and sweet. I listened to classical music on the way over. And as I was leaving work, my new manager stopped me to give me some feedback that was all so lovely and positive.

He, along with a couple other people that I work with, are social geniuses. Their motivation is that they care.. but what stops me is that they are so genuine.

I need to practice being genuine. It is a quality I find so wonderful, and aspire to so much. I have ever since I started studying people and their brainz, but it has just kept growing on me. I need to be so in all ways, all days.

My last psychometric assessment class was several weeks ago, on the 16PF and PAI, and I’ve one report to write before I’ve finished the whole course and the assessment competency. Of course I’ve been blithely ignoring this fact because writing reports sucks way more than reading feminist blogs or looking at funny cat pictures. Today, however, I had a full work day stretching out at the computer with little actual work afore me, so thought I may as well get it done. I was pleasantly surprised to find it isn’t due until next week! Gosh, I’d thought it due a week ago or sumpin.

Only as I sat down to write it my boss’ robotic intercom voice informed me he needed the online counselling policies and protocols by the end of the week (i.e. tomorrow). They were done months ago, but needed updating. So, sighing noisily, I got those done first. Spent the afternoon writing two pages of 16PF report. The 16PF is a personality test measuring (guess how many) traits such as warmth, assertiveness, liveliness, trustingness, perfectionism… which generally add up to correlate with the big five traits everyone knows. Writing the report is a total bitch. You not only have to analyse all these 16 traits, but also how they interact with each other and what they mean all together. UGH.

So I spent much of the day on it and am only about 68% done. boo.

Speaking of psych assessments, Jason has been scoring my WAIS (wikipedia wins today) results and I scored very superior in verbal comprehension (99th percentile betch), high average in perceptual reasoning and processing speed, average working memory (who here is surprised? Oh, there’s only me here. Well, I’m not surprised. Recall and arithmetic? Way to put all my weak points in the one subscale guys) and superior over all, with a composite IQ of…. 123. 94th percentile. That’s pretty good, right? Can you believe I was disappointed with it? haha. Jason kept saying, “it’s OK, you were on a lot of pain meds at the time, and your phone kept ringing to distract you…” BAH.

Every now and then I have a client I really like, about whom I think: you know, if we’d met under different circumstances we could’ve been the best of friends. I got a new one of them today. It’s not difficult to maintain professionalism or anything… it’s just a funny part of working within such an intimate, albeit completely one way, relationship with somebody.

Went to a burlesque event tonight called Carousel with Jason, Chelle, Jeremy & Storm. Jason had decided to try out his wormwood and all night was saying, “I don’t feel anything. This isn’t working.” But he was acting very different to usual; chatty, energetic, funny and weird. Kind of happy, but not exactly. Anyway, the show was alright.. if a tad predictable. But it’s burlesque; if I didn’t get corny stripteases, pasties and giant feather fans I’d feel ripped off. Despite it being free.

i’d planned to have a quiet night last night as I had my last psychometric testing class at 9am today. well. we all know how that turned out. it wasn’t so bad though. I actually left Vicki & Chelle’s at only 8pm, then fell asleep within the hour. I woke up at 2am, wide awake (and still drunk), so got up and .. may have played robot unicorn attack for two hours before going back to bed for another couple hours. so at least got adequate sleepz.

had chili con carne for breakfast at Circque on the way. then.. there was just me and one other girl in this class today, learning to score the PAI. my supervisor was there and told me she’d given me a glowing reference yesterday, to which I replied, “you must have, cause I got the job.” gosh, she was more excited than I am.

have spent the rest of the day watching True Blood, Serial Experiments Lain and My Neighbour Totoro. watching is about all i’ve been capable of. Storm suggested hanging out, and Jason mentioned wanting to visit Chelle & Vicki several times.. but..

i’d like a holiday. a week of not leaving the house. sitting in dark empty rooms, unkempt hair, roaming eyes, etc.

oh, I spotted three small holes in three leaves of my sunflowers today! something is eating my precious seedlings! 😡

tuesdayyyyyyys are the longest days. so many whys.
I start at 9.30 at a homeless shelter for women doing some counselling there till 1.30. then I go to my usual office and do telephone work until 5pm. then I see clients till 8pm. then I get two buses home. ughhh.
but I get two hours overtime 🙂

I hate the telephone work a lot. i’ve been complaining bitterly about it for weeks. they’re trying to take me off it… but, well, at one point they said “too bad, you’re stuck with it,” and I said, “well in that case i’m leaving,” and they said “fine.” that was highly upsetting, and I applied for another job.

this other job is absolutely fantastic and almost perfect… except it’s full time and a three year contract. that’s a bit more than I want to commit to. but, well, I have an interview for it tomorrow.

my ambivalence at least means I shouldn’t be too nervous. but I am, a bit.. on my walk home from the Valley I was trying to think of what they might ask me, and answering these practice questions out loud. I talked to myself all the way home. but at the end got bored and was horsing around a bit:

actually i’m just a genius of a counsellor, really. pretty much the best counsellor in the universe. sit any client with any possible issue down in front of me and I can guarantee all their problems will be solved after one session, two at most. and so will all their family’s problems. and their chronic illnesses and minor ailments will be completely cured, too. basically you’d be utter morons not to hire me on the spot. you’d really be sorry, I mean, you’d live to regret it. by that I mean i’d hunt you all down if it took me the rest of my days. it wouldn’t be hard. you all told me your names and i’m memorising your faces as we speak.

What is this mess

O hey, hi my darling. I'm overocea & this is my journal. I've vowed to note my everyday inconsequence indefinitely, so that I can read it when i'm 80. I expect it to be hideously boring to anyone except an 80year old me.